Skin Tight, Riverside Studios, London
Run ended

It’s a curious work, Skin Tight: uncomfortable, and perhaps a little tricksy, but one of very few plays to have sent me away blinking tears from my eyes.  At its heart it’s a simple tale of two people who want to spend their lives together – but will soon be forced to part.  Waiting for the time to say goodbye, the man and woman share episodic remembrances of the precious moments they’ve enjoyed: their first words, their first date, their first intimacy.

The nameless couple’s reminiscences range from the charmingly mundane to the cruelly unexpected, for there’s nothing like a parting of ways to flush out the secrets we’ve been bursting to share.  The horror of war is a particular, powerful theme, explored both through the eyes of the naïve young soldier and the desolation of the sweetheart he left behind.  It’s hard to bear at times.  But there’s well-judged humour too, defusing the tension of the play’s darker scenes and easing the embarrassment of its occasional sexual frankness.

All the same, I felt there were a few pacing issues.  The script is wonderfully tender, yet it’s punctuated by moments of gut-wringing tension; that’s hard to pull off, and the harshness of the interludes left me impatient during the more lyrical scenes.  There’s also a lot of messing about with a knife, which the characters press against each other’s skin and even (look away if squeamish) threaten to stab into their eyes.  I suspect I’ve failed to understand a metaphor here – but whatever it was trying to do, that particular motif managed only to make me cringe.

But the sparse set, evoking the mountains of New Zealand through nothing more than draped sheets, is otherwise used to great effect.  The only other prop of note – a bath – proves hugely versatile; in turns it’s threatening, sensual, and still.  The original music played live on stage is sparing and evocative as well, and the script itself is no less a celebration of simplicity, as the central characters look wistfully back on the rural life they have lost.

Yet there’s one aspect to this play which is anything but straightforward; the playwright – or was it the director? – has set us up for an audacious trick.  As the reason for our couple’s parting is slowly revealed, a crucial aspect of our understanding of them is proved to be utterly wrong.  It follows that some of what we’ve watched must have been a metaphor – or perhaps, happened only inside the characters’ minds.

I’ve never seen this technique used in quite this way before, and it thrilled and confounded me in equal measure.  I can’t help thinking that some of the audience will leave feeling tricked or confused.  But if you’re prepared to accept it, it’s an exciting development, which spurs you to run through your memories of the earlier scenes and paint them with fresh new colours.

And it clears the way, too, for a sharply bittersweet ending – a true masterclass in understated emotion, which cancelled out any nagging reservations which remained.  Softly acted, gently foreshadowed and crushingly inevitable, the final scene delivered both a satisfying sense of resolution and a keenly-felt, deeply personal, pain.

Sadly, it’s too late to catch Skin Tight at Riverside, as I only managed to see it at the very end of its run.  But it’s a script that’s spent some time on the Festival circuit – it won a Fringe First way back in 1998 – and I think there’s a good chance the current production will be venturing out again.